


Alone Together

by tsukiyamazing



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Character Study, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:31:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2698022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukiyamazing/pseuds/tsukiyamazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Accompanied by their demons, abandoned by their comrades, Tsukiyama and Kaneki never had the time to realize how similar they really were before the selves inside their bodies died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone Together

Kaneki hadn't wanted to wake up anymore.

Not since Yamori. Not since sleepless hours, days, weeks, months. Not since fear, not since screams, not since numb.

The torture had been over, but the pain had never stopped. It was a deep twisting, a complete rotting, a thorough gnawing, the type of discomfort no amount of Advil could alleviate, that no therapy could discard. This ache had become a part of him, another head that would never stop whispering vile things into his ear. It was an echo, a resonance of what every experience since he had become a ghoul told him. From Rize, from Yamori, from the CCG. Being a ghoul was wrong, but he couldn’t change what he was, so he had to pay with his sanity. 1, 2, 3, 4. . . numbers spun through his head, each one corresponding to the thoughts that buffeted his psyche relentlessly every waking moment of every single day. Hurt yourself because you deserve it. Take away their pain because you deserve it. Hate yourself because you deserve it.

All of the feelings inside of you are ones you deserve because it is your fault they are there.

Sometimes when he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of blackness and swirling pools of silence that beckoned him into their null grasp. He dreamed of the faces of all he knew, some he loved, some he could never really blame for their actions towards him. He dreamed of being a human, leading a normal life. Dreaming for Kaneki was like knowing that he would never be free, but touching the scars that that chains and cuffs had left on freedom’s body. So close that if he were to sink his teeth into this chance, he may be able to hold on and hitch a ride on the magnificent beast for as long as the world permitted. He knew that he had to be yanked off of the bull’s back, he knew that the very moment something started going well for him, someone would correct that.

It was enough to drive a person to madness, but Kaneki didn't let it. Kaneki stayed strong, and Kaneki constantly put others before himself. Even just little things. The man on the train had more need for the seat more than he did. He should spend money on a present for Touka rather than buy a new shirt.

Sometimes bigger things. Eating isn't that big of a deal when somebody else might need the already-dead body more. Someone like Hinami who cannot hunt, or a half-ghoul who hasn't come to terms with it yet.

When he thought about protecting his friends and associates, he thought of how he used to be. Carefree. Soft-spoken. Polite. Then he compared that past person to the present one. Crass. Rude. Angry.

He wanted to save the past person more than anything, so he constantly searched for the remnants of the former him in others, filling the hole that was his hollow being with self-righteous satisfaction.

Kaneki knew he was being selfish, that he was endeavoring to save the him that had died, but he couldn't stop. He knew he would find no gratification in searching for something that didn't exist, but he didn't care. Kaneki wasn't there anymore, so who was he?

Nobody.

He was a vacant shell, and the soul that had once resided within the caverns of his existence had been scraped clean, licked hollow by the greedy tongue of some invisible force until there was no more they wished to take. Ransacked, ruined, ravaged, like a house come to bandits. It was immaculate, save for the remnants of desire and pain that still echoed inside of his void self. Who was Kaneki? The walking corpse could have never told you the first thing about him. They shared a name, and that was where the similarities stopped.

Still, sometimes he wanted. Sometimes he wished to be clean, to be Kaneki again. Being a puppet with no master grew tiring. He carried his own weight constantly. Though there were many who wished to have him lean on them, he couldn't give himself up to any authority, no matter how promising the rewards he was supposed to reap were. He wouldn't let himself be controlled again. He felt as if he was free then, and even though he always managed to convince himself that he was, he knew there was a difference between being lonely and being free. When you were free, you were set loose, but accepted, tended to. When you were alone, there was nobody to heal your wounds, nobody to give you a crutch when you fell upon standing. But it was alright. It was just him and the voice in his head. Sure, the voice in his head wanted to kill him, wanted to break him, destroy him, ruin, break, destroy, kill, but at least he could count on it to always want that and always let him know that was what it wanted. When he was around others, he couldn't be sure that what was what they wanted, and so he had to assume. Sometimes he didn't want to assume that, though. Not about Touka, not about Uta, sometimes, not even about Tsukiyama. But he had to, and when he resisted, the voice just insisted for panic. Every second wasted, every breath expelled, every twitch of his digits around other people just heightened his anxiety until it was pushing at the seams of his body's rough fabric.

It was rare that other people calmed him. Kaneki was like a timid animal, but one that was prepared to cut you down where you stood if you made a single misstep. He had to be on guard constantly. So, the words that came from his lips had to slash, had to slice deeply into the body of whomever dared to try and tame him. He would snarl and snap and sink his jaws into the flesh of whoever he felt was threatening his survival. That was all he needed. To survive. Not to live or love or strive for some meaning on a higher level than that. Even so, such a basic wish was being relentlessly threatened by those around him. Why, he wondered, why can’t I just be alive? There was, occasionally, a thought of, “Hey! I might not deserve the treatment the world gives me!” but said thought would fade away into whatever wasteland thoughts that leave the mind disappear into, leaving a cavity precisely the size for a cloud of guilt to waft into and make its home.

And it would stay there.

And stay there.

And stay there.

Sometimes, it seemed as if the guilt he had would never leave, would never set sail for better shores in another man’s mind. But eventually, it would. And that feeling when he finally exorcised one of the demons in his brain was almost exactly identical to the ecstasy he felt when he was asleep. Every second without pain felt out of place, somehow. It was a high, a buzz, but it came with the knowledge that he would soon become sober. There was the looming fear that told him that every good feeling he had would evanesce at some point. It leaned over him, threatening to crack, implode, and bury him in the truth.

Everything was just so heavy. Too intense, too fast, too loud. He couldn’t keep up, but he also couldn’t stop it or slow it. There was no choice he had but to ignore everything, to distance himself from the noise of ghouls and humans coexisting with each other. Quite literally caught in the crossfire, the human in him told him to fight back, but the ghoul in him told him to hate himself. They were too loud to hear clearly, so he listened to neither. It always seemed like there was someone screaming at him, whether it was silent in the room or not. The only way to escape, it seemed, was to sleep.

Tsukiyama now understood exactly how Kaneki felt back then.

There he lay, on the roof where Kaneki had let him be. The perfect picture of a tragedy, a misfortune in color coated splendor. His desires had undone him, and he had, in turn, destroyed his desires with a fist weathered by cold fate. He wanted nothing more than to die, but there was no force that would be capable of preforming this wish save himself, as all the many who once hated him and the few who once loved him had vanished. He had lost any courage he might have had to preform the act of suicide. He was surrounding by walls that were only getting closer.

One string torn from the web, and he, the spider, fell helpless into his own trap.

He was alone now. Rather, he had always been alone, and this particular event brought it to his attention.

It was Kaneki's own choice, Kaneki's own decision that had ruined him, that had finally broken a cracked man that believed he was whole.

He had never even known how empty he truly was until Kaneki left him lying there, face to the cold concrete, soaked in his own vomit and tears. He had never been as painfully aware of his gripping and clawing lack as he had when he realized that he was truly hollow. Hollow, like a doll. Like a storybook character, made to be pretty and pleasing even in the most perplexing of plights. He was simply a game that had been toyed with, whilst he believed he was the only one capable of playing in such a way. He was made broken of glass stained in the vibrant colors of futility. Beautiful, maybe, but so very ugly.

There was something strange about this feeling that he was only getting now. It was like experiencing the pain of drowning but never achieving death, like being set ablaze but never to rest.  
He was feeling now, and it was strange to say the least. Before Kaneki left him, he never understood the pang in his heart he felt when a cold glare was far too easily granted to him from Touka. He couldn’t comprehend what it meant when he was referred to as a cold-blooded monster. He didn’t grasp peoples’ intent when they praised him. Now he felt with the hearts of a million young children. He knew what it all meant. He knew exactly how they hated him. And he felt it.

They were worse, emotions. Emotions were one thousand times more painful than having none at all.

He would no longer be referred to as living for food, because he didn't want to live, and he didn't want to eat. His one true desire had suddenly grown a will of its own and left him. He didn’t know what he wanted. Or rather, he knew what he wanted, but he had not the will to achieve it. He wanted Kaneki, and he wanted to be something, something free and painless and numb.

But he wasn't. He wasn't numb. He wasn't free. He wasn't anything. He was insignificant, and he was filled only with the knowledge of that fact. And he couldn’t find Kaneki, so how to devour the prey he could not catch? Even if he could find Kaneki, Tsukiyama wasn’t confident he even had the longing truly within him to eat him.

It was difficult. He had never truly belonged anywhere, and this truth had only just sunk its teeth into Tsukiyama's psyche. He hadn't belonged with Kaneki, not at Anteiku, not within the groups of fancy, carefully cultivated specimens high society had grown. He was a man, but he was less than that, a mere caricature of the primal and primordial desires inherently within humans, disguised by a sophisticated exterior. He could look as gussied up as he wished, covered in royal purple and bloody red, but none of that really fit his confidence as you would find it presently. He was only his skin now, and nothing he could do would fill up his body. Nothing he could do would stuff the hollow wolf he was with sheep’s fur. Empty, hollow, void.

Both of them. Both of them without stuffing. Both of them accompanied only by the voices in their minds. Both of them wishing to sleep. They were the same, but neither would or could turn to the other for help. They were the same, but neither would rise. They were the same, but neither would change.

And this plight, it begs for the question to be asked.

Alone together, or just alone?

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first Tokyo Ghoul fic I've written, so I don't know if the way I characterized them is accurate! If you have suggestions and/or criticisms, I would appreciate it if you commented! Thank you for reading!


End file.
